Attorney: Chris Watts' daughter begged for her life after watching sister's murder

FREDERICK, COLORADO — Christopher Watts, the Colorado man who is serving a life sentence for killing his pregnant wife and two daughters, drove the girls along with their dead mother's body on a 45-minute drive to a secluded oil field where he smothered the youngest with her favorite blanket and killed his 4-year-old after she watched her sister die and pleaded with her father for her own life, an attorney for the wife's family said.

Steven Lambert, who is representing the wife's family in a wrongful death suit, revealed the gruesome details during an interview with Dr. Phil which aired Tuesday.

Lambert also said that Watts' daughter walked in on him while he was disposing of his wife's body last August.

Based on that prison interview, Steven Lambert, the attorney representing Shanann Watts' family, told Phil McGraw, host of the talk show “Dr. Phil,” that the couple's 4-year-old daughter, Bella, walked in on her father disposing of her mother's body by wrapping it in a sheet.

“Bella walked in and asked, ‘What are you doing with Mommy?'” said Lambert.

Lambert said Watts told his daughter: "mommy is sick and we need to take her to the hospital to make her better."

According to Lambert, Shanann and Chris got into a fight at their Colorado home.

"They had made up, they were getting along quite well," said Lambert. "Later on, they got into a fight again. In that fight, [Chris] essentially confessed to having an affair, that he wanted a divorce, that it was pretty much over between them. And [Shanann] had said something to the effect of, 'Well, you're not gonna see the kids again.' As a consequence of that conversation, he strangled her to death."

After his arrest, Watts told police that he flew into a rage and strangled his wife and daughters, took the three bodies to a remote oil site north of Denver, buried Shanann in a shallow grave and dumped the girls' bodies inside oil tanks.

(Celeste, Bella and

Shanann

Watts)

Police believe Watts killed the three on Aug. 13 after a neighbor's security video showed Watts backing his pickup truck into his garage around 5:30 a.m.

With Shannan’s dead body in his truck, Watts drove his two daughters to an oil-and-gas field in Weld County, about 45 minutes away, Lambert said. He then smothered Celeste with her favorite blanket while her sister watched, Lambert added.

In Tuesday's episode, Lambert described the last words of Bella, who apparently pleaded with her father after watching him kill her little sister.

"He walks over and takes CC's, Celeste's, favorite blanket and smothers her," Lambert said. "And at that point Bella said, 'Please, daddy. Do not do to me what you just did to CC.' And then he killed Bella."

The bodies of Shanann, who was pregnant, and the girls were found on Aug. 16.

Shanann grew up in Aberdeen, North Carolina, and had visited family and friends still living in in the state just weeks before her death. She attended Pinecrest High School in Southern Pines and married Chris Watts in Charlotte in 2012.